Call The Midwife: BBC show goes racy when nurses visit 'strip club'

PLEASE avert your eyes. Call The Midwife (BBC1, Sunday) has gone racy. Normally this period drama’s definition of excitement is a nice warming mug of tea, a plain digestive and a reassuring episode of Z Cars.

Call The Midwife got a little racy when the nurses visited a 'strip club'

But the first episode of the new series went all chocolate bourbon and Pulp Fiction on us: we visited a “strip club”.

From what I could see, this ill-lit but well-heated premises offered a constant stream of attractive ladies who could only afford to dress in their underwear – “in the coldest winter for 300 years” – thus provoking the attentions of the opposite sex.

Most shockingly, some men even appeared rather interested.

The focus of the episode fell on one of the female operatives in the club who turned up for her regular lunchtime (“for beginners”) performance in, as her helpful madame explained, a “winceyette nightie and a quilted house coat”.

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The first episode of the new series went all chocolate bourbon and Pulp Fiction on us: we visited a “strip club”

OK, we’re really interested now. Alas, this outfit was conceived to disguise the fact that she was with child but without the traditional home set-up. That’s the really shocking bit – or “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” as one of the midwives would say later.

She was also exclaiming at the general air of crisis seeping into Nonnatus House, normally a centre of terrifying calm.

Not only was the winter proving to be cold (shock), an old German lady was dying while her house was under threat of being knocked down, people were moaning about the number of foreign workers and there were power cuts.

It was all resolved impressively, within the hour, although the dear German lady did die after all. They can’t perform miracles you know.

Trixie (Helen George) did also manage to complete a tricky breech birth on our “dancer” without a bead of sweat appearing on her brow and with a full face of make-up pleasingly intact. That’s real class.

She has undoubtedly brought some much-needed glamour to that AA meeting.

But, as ever, my favourite will remain the indomitable Sister Monica who is fighting off dementia with enormous courage and determination.

Faced with a shortage of nurses, she boomed: “Our numbers are unconscionably depleted!”

God bless her – and feel free to put in a call to Jeremy Hunt. But just mind how you go using any East End rhyming slang.

James Norton in McMafia (BBC1, Sunday) continues to act superbly. He is now very good at looking transfixed while peering into a screen of numbers.

The tension also rises considerably when his “secret”, second mobile phone rings. When this happens at home, his flaky fiancée can appear very distressed.

Last week’s episode was in danger of getting exciting for five minutes or so.

Alex Godman’s (Norton) associate, Mr Kleiman from Tel Aviv, was framed for raping a young man. Improbably, Godman flew off there immediately to sort it out.

He did a splendid job – until the apparent victim’s real boyfriend was shot in cold blood.

BBC

James Norton continues to act superbly in McMafia on BBC1

Disappointingly, it was the only execution-style shooting in the episode.

Godman is no better now than the uncle he is apparently avenging. I don’t believe that side of his character for a moment.

Or perhaps, in episode eight, we will see him walking slowly into the Serious Fraud Office with a large manilla folder full of really interesting numbers.

He will spill the sheets across an investigating officer’s desk and we will all cheer...

As we did when Ant and Dec picked up another host of gongs at the National Television Awards (ITV, Tuesday).

They present the best (word used advisedly) reality show, I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! and make Britain’s Got Talent the most watchable talent show on TV.

When the boys are finally bought up by moneybags streaming channel Netflix, in a bid the size of Germany’s GDP, ITV will have to fly the white flag over its Southbank headquarters. No one could replace them.

The NTAs are a bizarre selection of gongs in an event that is a 150-minute showcase of ITV shows.

Why doesn’t the BBC do its own popular awards for TV? Might as well.

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Ant & Dec picked up numerous awards at the National Television Awards on Tuesday

Audiences love watching clips of television programmes. They will even watch “ordinary” people talking about clips of television shows on Gogglebox, which picked up another award for the least obvious format for a TV show ever.

The low point of the evening was not the prospect of Piers Morgan hosting (he would actually be better than Dermot O’Leary) but the “Comedy” section, for which only three nominations could be found.

The first was the now limp Big Bang Theory, which is not even British in case they hadn’t noticed.

Then it was Still Open All Hours, which has protected “Last Of The Summer Wine status”, while the winner was the excellent Car Share from Peter Kay.

Stars are red carpet-ready as they arrive for the NTAs

Wed, January 24, 2018

The stars of the small screen are out in their masses tonight for the NTAs

The state of our comedy is laughable but with all the money going into drama, the prospect of a second series of Amanda Holden’s Big Top is more likely.

The best moment of the evening was undoubtedly hearing the extraordinary story of the underwater photographer who was filming Blue Planet II when he was almost dragged to his death by a humpback whale.